Just to warn you, this is only the first in what will likely become a lengthy and sorry series about how sad I am that this is my last baby. Crazy as it may seem, having Genoa just made me want to have more babies. I've pretty much already forgiven my body and forgotten the whole nasty pregnancy business. Even my stitches have already healed.
Today I took her down to Maternal Connections (basically the We Want You to NURSE! store at the hospital) and weighed her out of fear that she was sleeping too much to even possibly be getting enough nutrition. Alex lost so much of his birth weight that I had to wake him up to nurse every two hours until he was three weeks old, so I guess my paranoia was reasonable. By last Friday (at the famed pediatrician's appointment), she had dropped about four ounces and was down to 8 lbs, 2 oz. Today she weighed 8 lbs, 8 oz, so I had no reason to worry. She's a veritable chow hound like her mother.
Then I came home and read this post by Liz of Granny Gets a Vibrator. And it made me bawl. In twenty years I'm going to look back and cry too - that this time with my babies was so short. Genoa is a week old now and it already feels like I want the time back. She's already bigger than she was at birth. Soon I'm going to blink and she'll be a giant toddler at my breast instead of an infant and Alex will be in school. IN SCHOOL. I can't even wrap my mind around that. I'm so not ready for them to grow up yet. I want this time, My Baby Years, to last as long as possible because I know I'm smack dab in the middle of my peak. When I'm 100 years old, I'm going to think 30 was the best age I ever was.
So this first week with two children has been pretty wonderful, not the scary chaotic mess everyone warned me about. Even Alex becoming completely disobedient in every way that it is possible for a brilliant two year old to be so was memorable. And understandable. And already improving. So far he's a good big brother and only once got mad that Baby Sister was crying (we were all in the bathroom and he wanted my attention and I told him "I"m going pee!" and the baby was crying and he couldn't HEAR me going pee and that pissed him off inexplicably and he yelled "STOP CRYING!") He gives her lots of snugly head kisses and even proudly helps me change diapers bragging "I'm going to be The Wipes Guy."
Maybe it's just the baby moon and maybe it's just that I lucked out and birthed a child who only wakes up once a night, but I'm not finding this all that difficult. (Yet.) Everything about having a newborn (including the healing stitches and the hemorrhoids and the giant boobs of doom) is superior to being pregnant in literally every way. I'm actually getting better sleep than I did before, my energy level has magically improved and I've even lost that fanatical urge to eat everything in sight all day long. Not being pregnant is awesome.
And of course there's the baby! I LOVE HER. Have I mentioned that? How I'm completely smitten? Tonight she had her first bath (another last first) and now she has that smell - that fresh clean BABY smell that makes you want to gobble them up or bake them in a pie or something. See what I mean?
